Interviews// Marvel Heroes: David Brevik Speaks

SPOnG: Is there not a concern of various elements of free-to-play being quite a negative thing? Particularly if many publishers get on board with things like micro-transactions - something we’re seeing already with Dead Space 3. Do you think widespread adoption of microtransactions is a slippery slope for publishers?

David Brevik: Well, yes and no. I believe that publishers need to find new ways to monetise their games. That’s just a fact. The fact is, the price of games hasn’t changed at all in the last twenty years. The cost of a game at retail has gone up very little, compared to everything else. In comparison, a movie ticket or something like that is at least double the price it was twenty years ago.

Games haven’t increased in retail price, yet the cost of actually making a game has increased by at least ten times - maybe twenty times - over the last couple of decades. So the profit margins on games have sunk lower and lower. With these next-generation systems coming out, the price tags [to make] AAA games will go up even more.

Publishers need to find a way to actually have an opportunity to create high-end content, high-end experiences, because the budgets are just astronomical. There needs to be something they can do. [Micro-transactions] are one such method.

But, how do I feel about that as a gamer? Well, it kind of sucks - especially when I go out and buy a box for sixty bucks, then realise I’ve got to buy ten dollars worth of this, that and the other thing. All of a sudden I’ve spent a hundred bucks on one game! In a lot of ways, I wish they just let me spend the hundred bucks up front and be done with it [laughs].

So I don’t know, there’s two sides to it. In the end, the right model will be the one that comes out the other side... someone will get successful using a particular model, and everyone else will likely follow suit.


SPOnG: Doesn’t the free-to-play model actually run counter to what you said about game budgets, though? If you’re making a game for free, you may not potentially get any of that budget back at all.

David Brevik: Yes, it does run counter to it. It’s a risk [laughs]. It’s a big risk, but I think that if history proves that these games can be successful without being heavy handed and reliant on micro-transactions... I mean, even if a smaller percentage of people actually convert to paying users, you find that most of those customers will end up spending more money than they would if your game was subscription-based or sold as a $60 box. That mentality enables free-to-play to be successful.


SPOnG: You’re currently focused on a release for PC and Mac, but there seems to be growing movement towards introducing MMO and F2P games on consoles too. Do you see these games being adopted on console hardware in a mainstream sense in the future?

David Brevik: I think it’s possible. Right now, consoles don’t support that very well, and certainly the organisations don’t either. But, with the advent of new consoles and other hardware, such as Valve’s Steam Box, I think that larger corporations will have to adapt to the changing marketplace.

Just like they’ve had to adapt to better support digital distribution - the same thing is going to happen with free-to-play. Especially if free-to-play becomes a successful model in the US or Europe, they will have to adapt to that and change their thinking.


SPOnG: Joss Whedon made the Avengers film, which merged a lot of Marvel heroes and IPs together. That was critically acclaimed and very successful, but the art of achieving that is obviously a very hard thing to do. Is there any pressure on you guys to accomplish the same thing in the game space?

David Brevik: [Laughs] I could only dream of making two billion dollars box office, or whatever he did! There is some pressure, I mean the Marvel license is at an all-time high, and it would be wonderful to be that successful. I think that we are hopefully using the Marvel license in a way that presents a new type of gaming experience to people, and people are now much more familiar with the heroes after the movies and things like that. This is something they can further gravitate towards - of course, the success of the films and comics brings a lot of exposure on us, but it’s up to us to make a great game.


SPOnG: A lot of Diablo fans didn’t take to Diablo III as well as previous instalments. Do you think that’s a sign that gamers aren’t receptive to that kind of gameplay anymore?

David Brevik: I still think it’s a genre that works. It’s not just accessible by hardcore gamers, but also by a more general audience. More people are able to play Diablo-style games than anything else, and i think that’s down to its accessibility. As far as the core gaming is concerned, it’s a lot easier to control a Diablo-style game than it is a first person shooter.

Core gamers also like the gameplay because of the depth of the systems that are there. It’s important for us to get that right to really appeal to them. I don’t think they are going to be upset by Marvel Heroes due to the fact that the controls are Diablo-like. I think there are still plenty of gamers that love that style of game.

And I hope that people will like Marvel Heroes. It’s just a very different game to Diablo III. Diablo III went in a different direction than what I had planned for it, and a lot of the concepts that I was going to use for Diablo III have been incorporated into Marvel Heroes.


SPOnG: You’ve previously stated that you wanted to break some MMO conventions with Marvel Heroes. Could you elaborate on how the game is going against the norm?

David Brevik: In MMO terms, [Marvel Heroes] isn’t the clone of World of Warcraft that everybody’s really done ad-nauseum at this point. And it doesn’t have the same quest structure. We’ve changed all that. One of the important differences is, because it’s a free-to-play game and not subscription-based, we don’t have to have gamers play hundreds and hundreds of hours to do anything.

We aren’t trying to get people to subscribe over months and periods of time, so we don’t have to have them in there for the next 6 months trying to level up or whatever. I mean, we still have that opportunity, but we can break that rule if we want to. The same rules don’t apply from a design standpoint. So that’s really nice.

From an action RPG standpoint, I think we’ve done a lot of things to take what we had in Diablo II and take it to the next level. The crafting system, making it an MMO, having public quests... this is all stuff we’ve never done before.


SPOnG: Thank you very much for your time.

David Brevik: Thank you!